CHAPTER XLVI.

AFTER OUR LAST ICEBERG.—THE ISLES.—TWILIGHT BEAUTIES OF ICEBERGS.—MIDNIGHT ILLUMINATION.

Friday,July 15. This is another of the summer days of Labrador, with a soft, southerly wind, tempting one to ramble in spite of musquitoes and black flies, which, though few, are uncommonly pestilent. The painter is sleeping from very weariness, and I am loitering about these cliffs, note-book in hand, in a drowsy state, for a similar reason. These long days and late hours about headlands and icebergs are attended with their pains as well as pleasures. From the tenor of my pages one would think that all was joyous and interesting. Let him reflect, that for his sake I record the joyous and the interesting, and pass by the dull and the vexatious. I flit from frowning cliff to cliff where the surf thunders and Leviathan spends his holiday among the capelin, and linger in the sunshine and shadow of an iceberg, the choicest among fifty, but give you but a suspicion of the common things between. The sparkling points of the life of this novel voyage are for the reader’s eye; the chill and the weariness, and the sea-sickness, and the mass of things, lumpish and brown in “the light of common day,” are for that tomb of the Capulets away back in the fields of one’s own memory. But to return: this kind of life begins to wear upon us, to wear upon the nerves, and suggests the importance of keeping dull and still awhile.

I find myself looking towards home, looking that way over the sea from the hill-tops, and rather dreading the rough and tumble and chances of the journey. I regret that time will not permit a continuation of the voyage, at least as far as Sandwich Bay, where the mountains are now covered with snow. We shall visit, this afternoon and evening, our last iceberg, and mainly for some experiments with lights. The rocks here, among which I saunter, are a kind of gallery tufted with wild grass and herbage, up to which a few goats climb from the dwellings near our vessel, and upon a patch of which I lounge and scribble. If there were any spirit in me, the fine prospect, although somewhat familiar, would awaken some fresh thoughts and feelings. One thought comes swelling up from the sluggish depths—it is this: There is a fascination in these northern seas, with their ices and their horrid shores. The arctic voyagers feel and act under its impulse. I can understand their readiness to return to polar scenes.

Late in the afternoon, sailing up the bay, after an ugly iceberg of no particular shape or remarkable attraction. In New York Bay, it would be thought a most splendid thing, and so indeed it would be; but here, in contrast with the great berg of Belle Isle water, and many others, it is a small matter, a harmless and dull specimen of its kind. Its merit is its convenience. And yet, let me tell you, we pause in our approach at a distance of seventy yards. I am not willing to go any nearer upon this, the cliff side. The agent, Mr. Bendle, told us this morning, that when he first came from England to these shores, he was fond of playing about icebergs, and once rowed a boat under a lofty arch, passing quite through the berg, a thing that he could not now be persuaded to attempt. The wind blows rather strongly, and we lie to the leeward of the ice, rolling quite too much for painting. There is no accounting for these currents which flow in upon, and flow away from these bergs. The submarine ice so interferes with the upper and lower streams that the surface water rolls and whirls in a manner upon which you cannot calculate. Under the leeward here, one would naturally suppose that the current would set toward the ice, and require an effort on our part to keep away. The contrary is the case. Two good oars are busy in order to hold us up to our present position. The wind and the swell increase, and so we make sail and scud to some small islands distant half a mile. We moor our boat under the shelter of the rocks and clamber up, look around upon the ruins washed and rusty, and take a run.

At seven o’clock I sit down on the warm side of a crag, and look about with the intention of seeing what there is worth looking at in a spot to which one might flee who was tired of seeing too much. Upon the word of a quiet man, I find myself in the very middle of the beautiful, and ought to be thankful that we are here, and wish that we might be suffered to come again. And what is there here? Wise men have written volumes over less. I do not know but here are groups of the South Sea Isles in miniature. For example, separated from us by a narrow gulf of water, and such clear, bright water, is an islet with a ridge, a kind of half-moon crest, carpeted with olive-tinted moss, over which the lone sun pours a stream of almost blinding light. What glory the God of nature sheds upon these rugged outworks of the earth! The painter that could faithfully repeat upon canvas this one effect of light would leave Claude and Cole, and the like, far enough behind to be forgotten. The wind is lulling; the sun touches and seems to burn the crest of the island opposite, after eight o’clock. C⁠—— is finishing a sketch; the Captain and I have been hunting the sea-pigeons’ nests, a pair of which keep flying off and on; and now the men are making the boat ready for our twilight and evening play around “the ugly iceberg.” How glad the poor little family of ducks must be, from whose home we have driven them, that we are going away. They have been pretending to swim off, and yet have managed to keep back near enough to watch us over the shoulder, ever since we arrived. Timid, cunning fellows, how much they appear to know! A stone disperses them, some to the wing and some to the bottom; and now here they are again, all riding the same swell, and seeming to swim away while they watch our motions, continually turning their slick, black heads quickly over the shoulder.

If you would look upon the perfectly white and pure, see an iceberg between you and the day’s last red heavens. If you would behold perfect brilliancy, gaze at the crest of an iceberg cutting sharply into those same red heavens. To all appearance it will burn and scintillate like a crown of costly gems. In all its notched, zigzag and flowing outline, it palpitates and glitters as if it were bordered with the very lightning. He that watches the Andean clouds of a July sunset, and beholds them rimmed, now with pink and rose-hues, and now with golden fire, will see the edges of an iceberg when it stands against the sky glowing with the yellow and orange blaze of sunset. We go to the skies for pure azure; you will find it at twilight in these wonderful Greenland ices. I am looking now upon what mimics the ruins of a tower, every block of which, in one light, gleams like crystal; in another, as if they had been quarried from the divinest sky. Cloud-like and smoke-like, they look light as the cerulean air. This, as I have said already, is the effect of perfect white seen through deep, transparent shadow. True azure is the necessary result. More than enough, it would seem, has been said of these forms and colors. But really the eye never wearies of these arctic palaces so grandly corniced and pillared; these sculptures so marvellously draped. As we gaze at them, even in this meagre and common berg, under this delicate light veiled with the dusk of evening, they are astonishing in their beauty. I look at them with joyful emotions, with wonder and with love. Why do they not rustle with a silken, satin rustle?

After dark, we sailed round to the northern extremity, where from the lowness of the ice it was more safe to approach it, and dropped sail in order to experiment with the blue lights furnished us by the governor. Rowing up quite closely, within eight yards perhaps, C⁠——, who stood ready upon the bow, fired a couple. In the smoke and glare “we were a ghastly crew,” while the berg was rather obscured than beautified. We then rowed round to the side where the current was setting rapidly towards the ice, and launched a flaming tar-barrel. With a stone for ballast, it kept upright, and floated in fine style directly into the face of the berg—an irregular cliff of sixty feet, pierced with caverns. It was kept for some time under a succession of the brightest flashes of pink light. Upon one slope of the swells the sheaf of red flames gushing from the barrel would be turned from, on the other, toward the ice. Thus the whole eastern front was kept changing from light to darkness, from darkness to light. As the brightness was flung back and forth from the sea to the berg, and from the berg to the sea, the effect was exceedingly novel and beautiful. When the swells bore the full-blown torch into a cave, and its ruddy tongues were licking the green, glassy arches, we hoisted sail and went gaily bounding back to harbor. For a while, the fire shot its fitful rays over the lonely waters, and gleamed “like a star in the midst of the ocean.” At last it was quenched in the distant gloom. A ghostly figure with dim outline was all that was visible, and our work and play with icebergs were over—over forever. It was midnight and past, when we dropped sails alongside the vessel, after a quick run, enlivened, as we entered the harbor, by a sudden display of the northern-light.

CHAPTER XLVII.

FAREWELL TO BATTLE HARBOR.—THE STRAITS OF BELLE ISLE.—LABRADOR LANDSCAPES.—THE WRECK OF THE FISHERMEN.

Saturday,July 16. “Once more upon the waters, yet once more.” We were awakened from sound slumbers by the footsteps and voices of the men above, making ready for sea. It was a pleasant sound, and the sunshine streaming down into the cabin was welcome intelligence of the brightness of the morning. We dressed in time to get on deck, and wave a final adieu to our friends, from whom we had formally parted yesterday, as well as from Mr. and Mrs. Bendle, of whose hospitality we bear away agreeable recollections.

And now the broad Atlantic is before, and Cape St. Louis, its waters and its ices, behind the intervening islands. The signal staffs of Battle and Cariboo Islands are yet visible from the high rocks that overlook that busy nest of fishermen, with its steepled church and parsonage. God’s love abide with the man that lives there, and ministers to the religious wants of men, women, and children, who have little else than respect and affection to make his home comfortable and happy. While kind hearts, and none kinder than those of the Esquimaux, throb beneath rough manners and uncomely raiment, there are wicked spirits there, no doubt, as everywhere, that hurt and hinder, and never help, and render the solitary path among the rocks insufferably lonesome and painful. The remembrances of famous and beloved kindred, of old and honored Cambridge, and of the quiet rectory under the Malvern Hills, are much to a cultivated and sensitive nature; the bliss that flows from daily duties cheerfully done with an habitual resignation to the will of God, and with hopes of glory in the future, is more than recollections, to a heart whose motive powers are Christian faith and love. But amid all the sweetest memories, and the brightest hopes, and the comforting satisfaction of believing well and doing well, it is a fearful thing for cultivated man to toil in solitude and deprivation. Although heaven is above him, and his pathway certainly upward, yet a double portion of all those good and perfect gifts coming from above, be awarded to the man whose parish is in Labrador; who, when he leaves the still companionship of books for the toils of the gospel from door to door, must take down either his oars or his snow-shoes, and sweep over the snow-drift or the billow.

We now beat slowly up the straits of Belle Isle for the Gulf of St. Lawrence, hoping to pass these dangerous waters by daylight. They are very fair to look upon at this time of day, studded in all directions with those shining palaces of ice seen from the top of St. Charles Mountain. The coast hills have a graceful outline, and slant quite smoothly down, abutting on the sea in low broken cliffs. They resemble the hills of Maine and Canada after April thaws, while the heavier snow-drifts yet remain, and the yellow brown sod is patched with faint green. Forsaken country! if that can be called forsaken which appears never to have been possessed. Doleful and neglected land! Chilly solitude keeps watch over your unvisited fields, and frightens away the glory of the fruitful seasons. The loving sunshine and the healing warmth wander hand in hand tenderly abroad, calling upon the lowly moss to wake up and blossom, and to the tiny, half-smothered, flattened willows to rise and walk along the brook banks. But the white-coated police of winter, the grim snow-drifts, watch on the craggy battlements of desolation, and luxuriance and life peep from their dark cells only to sink back pale and spiritless. To a traveller there is real beauty on the tawny desert and the wild prairie; but there is to me an awful lonesomeness and gloom in these houseless wastes where the eye with an insane perverseness will keep looking for cottage smokes and pasture fences. I think of landscapes drying off after the flood.

The bergs are in part behind us, and we are rocking on the easy swells of Henly Harbor, where we can glean no more signs of human “toil and trouble” than are just enough to tie a name to, and quite a pretty name too. The lazy sails flap idly in the sunshine, and the cold air cuts with the sharpness of a frosty October morning. I sit in the July heat with overcoat, and cloak over the overcoat, woollen mittens and woollen stockings, and with cold feet at that. And yet this miserable shore has, in its cod and salmon, attractions for thousands of people during the transient summer. Even the long and almost arctic winter with its seals and foxes detains hundreds. But, as a fisherman told me one day, while tossing upon the dock with his pitchfork a boat-load of cod, “It is a poor trade.” It is a little trying to patience to be rolling in this idle way, with the creak of spars and the rattling of blocks and rigging, especially as a breeze has been winging the blue water for an hour not more than a mile ahead of us. We do move a little, just a little, enough to keep the hope breathing that we shall soon move off with reasonable speed.

The current is almost a river stream, and we are drifting rapidly, which is not a pleasant thing to be thinking about, with these waters scouring the very banks, and a short cable. I am gazing back upon the southern point of Belle Isle with a mournful interest. It was only the night of the second, the same night we ran into Twillingate to escape a gale, that a vessel was lost there, and all, or nearly all, on board perished. At this moment there is a faint line of white, but not a murmur. All looks quiet there and peaceful, as if the lion was going up to lie down with the lamb.

PLATE No. 6.ICEBERG IN THE STRAIT OF BELLE ISLELith. of Sarony Major & Knapp, 449 Broadway NY.

CHAPTER XLVIII.

SKETCHING THE PASSING BERGS.—THE STORY OF AN ICEBERG.

Thepainter is a model of industry, sketching and painting the bergs as we pass them. They are now clustered on the northern horizon, with a few exceptions. We have been for some time near one, out of which might be cut an entire block of Broadway buildings, evidently presenting the same upper surface that it had when it slid as a glacier from the polar shore. If such is the fact, we infer that in its long glacial experience it could not have remained long near any mass of earth higher than itself, for there is not a stone or particle of dust or earthy stain upon it. It is as spotless as a cloud “after the tempest.” How beautiful is the sentiment of it! It carries the imagination away to those heavenly walls depicted in Revelation, and sends it back upon the track of its own story.

The story of an iceberg! yes, indeed; and a most wonderful tale would it be, could it be truthfully written. It would run up into, and become lost in the story of the great glaciers of Greenland; the half of which science itself has not learned, profoundly as it has penetrated the mysteries of the Alpine glaciers.

There are valleys reaching from the interior to the coast, filled with glaciers of great depth and breadth, which move forward with an imperceptible but regular motion. The continent, as one might call Greenland, does not shed the bulk of its central waters in fluid rivers, but discharges them to the ocean in solid, crystalline, slowly progressing streams. They flow, or rather march, with irresistible, mighty force, and far-resounding footsteps, crossing the shore line, a perpetual procession of block-like masses, flat or diversified with hill and hollow on the top, advancing upon the sea until too deeply immersed longer to resist the buoyant power and pressure of the surrounding waters, when they break upwards, and float suspended in the vast oceanic abyss. The van of the glacial host, previously marked off by fissures into ranks, rushes from the too close embrace of its new element, and wheels away, an iceberg—the glistening planet of the sea, whose mazy, tortuous orbit none can calculate but Him who maps the unseen currents of the main.

When and where, on the lengthy Greenland coast, did this huge block make the grand exchange of elements? Which, if any of these great buildings “not made with hands,” now whitening the blue fields of Neptune, followed or preceded it? What have been its solemn rounds? Through what winters has it slept, and caught the snows upon the folds of its sculptured draperies? How many summers has it bared its spotless bosom to the sun and rains? What nights of auroral splendors have glassed their celestial countenance in its shining mirrors? What baths and vases of blue water have opened their pure depths to moon and stars? What torrents and cascades have murmured in its glassy chasms, crystal grottoes, Alpine dells? And who shall count its battles with the waves and tempests, when with the surf about its shoulders and among its locks, and the clouds around its brow, it stood far up from the unsounded valleys of ocean “tiptoe on the mountain top”?

In the defiles and gorges of the Arctic coast are prodigious accumulations of ice—the congelation of small streams flowing from the adjacent mountains—the glaciers of the coast range, in short. These gradually encroach upon, and overhang the sea; and are continually breaking off, from the undermining of the waves which beat at their base. Such is the depth of water, that the hugest avalanche of ice can fall with safety to itself, and float away.

When, and in what bay or inlet, may this Great Northern have been launched? Out of what gloomy fiord may have rolled the billows, after its icy fastenings were loosed, and it slid, with the thunder of an earthquake, down its slippery ways, and plunged into the black deep?

Until science have her beaten pathway over polar waves and hills, and measure the rain-falls and the snow-falls, and the freezings of the one and the compactings of the other, the story of the glacier and the iceberg, in their native land and seas, will be left, in part, to the imagination—a faculty, after all, that will ever deal with those wonderful ices about as satisfactorily as the faculty that judges according to the sense, as Bishop Leighton calls the mere scientific faculty. The truth of this is illustrated by the very icebergs about us. Emphatically as they speak to the naturalist with his various instrumentalities, they speak, at the same moment, with marvellous eloquence to the poet and the painter. There are forces, motions, and forms, voices, beauties, and a sentiment, which escape the touch of science, and are scarcely caught by the subtle, poetic mind. Icebergs, to the imaginative soul, have a kind of individuality and life. They startle, frighten, awe; they astonish, excite, amuse, delight and fascinate; clouds, mountains and structures, angels, demons, animals and men spring to the view of the beholder. They are a favorite playground of the lines, surfaces and shapes of the whole world, the heavens above, the earth and the waters under: of their sounds, motions and colors also. These are the poet’s and the painter’s fields, more than they are the fields of the mere naturalist, much as they are his. Do not these fifty bergs, in sight from any crag frowning in its iron strength above the surf, speak more a living language to the creative, than to the mensural faculty? Let us see.

They have a daily experience, and a current history more remarkable now than ever. Whatever may have been the wonders of their conception, birth and growth; however lengthy and devious their voyage, they are present in these strange seas, in these tepid waters and soft airs, to undergo their last, fatal changes, and dissolve forever into their final tomb. There are fifty icebergs, more or less. Apparently similar in appearance, yet each differs widely from all others. Exhibiting similar phenomena, yet each has complexions, movements, sounds and wonders of its own. If we choose, though, to add to the performances of to-day, those of yesterday and to-morrow, we shall find that the experience of any one berg closely resembles that of all. The entire circle of its looks and doings corresponds with the circle of nearly every other berg, and so of all together, differing merely in the matter of time—as towhenthe changes take place. The description upon which I will venture, and which might be gleaned from the foregoing pages, is, therefore, strictly true, except that the phases and accidents are supposed to occur in rapid succession. In a word, what you would behold in all of these fifty, within twenty-four hours, you are to fancy of one, in the course of an afternoon.

I have before me, in my mind’s eye, the Windsor Castle berg, fresh from the north, and the Great Castle berg, of Belle Isle water, which it entered early last May, and as large, at the time of its arrival, as both of them at present combined. And so I am looking at a veritable berg of Cape St. Louis, small, though, in comparison with the berg of Cape St. Francis, “a vast cathedral of dazzling white ice, with a front of 250 feet perpendicular from the sea,” visited by the Bishop of Newfoundland in the summer of 1853.

I will describe, first, the figure of the berg. It is a combination of Alp, castle, mosque, Parthenon and cathedral. It has peaks and slopes; cliffs, crags, chasms and caverns; lakes, streams and waterfalls. It has towers, battlements and portals. It has minarets, domes and steeples; roofs and gables; balustrades and balconies; fronts, sides and interiors; doors, windows and porches; steps and entrances; columns, pilasters, capitals and entablatures; frieze, architrave and cornice; arches, cloisters, niches, statuary and countless decorations; flutings, corrugations, carvings, panels of glassy polish and in the rough; Greek, Roman, Gothic, Saracenic, Pagan, Savage. It is crested with blades and needles; heaped here and there with ruins, blocks and bowlders, splintered and crumbled masses. This precipice has a fresh, sharp fracture; yonder front, with its expanse of surface beautifully diversified with sculptured imagery and other ornament, has the polish of ivory—the glassy polish of mirrors—the enamel of sea-shells—the fierce brightness of burnished steel—the face of rubbed marble—of smoothest alabaster—of pearl—porcelain—lily-white flesh—lily-white wax—the flesh-finish of beauty done in the spotless stone of Italy. This, though, is but the iceberg of the air; the head and crown only of the iceberg of the deep sea.

From the figure of the berg, I will come to describe an important feature of its life and history: its motion; not its movement from place to place, but upon its centre—its rotation and vibration. Where the berg is not grounded—in which case it only beats and sways to and fro, vibrating through the arc of a circle like an inverted pendulum—when it is not grounded, it must be supposed to hang suspended at the surface—all but the topmost part—justunderthe surface of the ocean, very much as a cloud, a great white thunder-head, hangs suspended in the upper air. Balanced around its heart, far down in the deep, and in its cold solidity “dry as summer dust”—poised upon its centre with perfect exactness, it is evident that the loss of a single ton of ice shifts that centre, shifts it an ounce-notch on the bar of the mighty scale, destroys the equilibrium, and subjects the whole to the necessity of some small movement in order to regain its rest. When, instead of one ton, thousands fall off, it sets a rolling the whole clifted and pinnacled circumference.

And here begins that exhibition of novel forms and shapes, and of awful force, and the sublimity of stupendous masses in motion, that so impresses, awes, startles, and fascinates the beholder. A berg in repose, wondrous as it is to him that dares to linger in its presence, differs from itself in action, as a hero in his sleep differs from himself upon the field of battle.

With regard to the motions of the berg, it must be borne in mind, that, from the fact of its centre being not on a level with the surface of the sea, but at depths below, they are quite different from what might at first be imagined. A rough globe, revolving upon its axis, with but a small portion of its bulk, say a twelfth, above the water; or, better still, the hub and spokes merely of a common wagon wheel, slowly rolling back and forth, will serve for illustration. The uppermost spoke, in its vibrations to the right and left, describes a line of some extent along the surface, not unlike an upright stick moving to and fro, and gradually rising and sinking as it moves. In this movement back and forth, the two adjacent spokes will be observed to emerge and disappear correspondingly. In this way, a berg of large diameter, instead of falling over upon the sea like a wall or precipice, appears to advance bodily, slowly sinking as it comes, with a slightly increasing inclination toward you. In its backward roll, this is reversed. It seems to be retreating, slowly rising as it floats away, with a slightly increasing inclination from you. In these grand vibrations, projecting points and masses of opposite sides correspondingly emerge and disappear, rising apparently straight up out of the sea on this side, going down as straight on the other.

From the figure and motion of the berg, I come to describe the motive power, rather the explosive power, through which the delicate balance is destroyed, and motion made a necessity in order to gain again equilibrium and rest. Whatever may be the latent heat of ice, is a question for the professed naturalist. Two things are evident to the unlearned observer: an iceberg is as solid as ivory, or marble from the lowest depths of a quarry, and cold apparently as any substance on the earth can be made. This compact and perfectly frozen body, immersed in the warm seas of summer, and warmer atmosphere, finds its entire outside, and especially that portion of it which is exposed to the July sun, expanding under the influence of the penetrating heat. The scrutiny of science would, no doubt, find it certain that this heat, in some measure, darts in from all sides in converging rays to the very heart. The expanding power of heat becomes at length an explosive force, and throws off, with all the violence and suddenness of gunpowder, in successive flakes, portions of the surface. The berg, then, bursts from expansion, as when porcelain cracks with sharp report, suddenly and unequally heated on the winter stove. Judge of the report when the porcelain of a great cliff cracks and falls, or when the entire berg is blasted asunder by the subtle, internal fire of the summer sun! If you would hear thunders, or whole broadsides and batteries of the heaviest ordnance, come to the iceberg then.

Speaking incidentally of noises, reminds me of the hues and tints of the iceberg. Solomon in all his glory was not clothed like the flowers of the field. Would you behold this berg apparelled with a glory that eclipses all floral beauty, and makes you think, not only of the clouds of heaven at sunrise and sunset, but of heaven itself, you must come to it at sunrise and at sunset. Then, too, you would hear its voices and its melodies, the deep and mournful murmuring of the surf in its caverns. Hark! In fancy I hear them now, half thunder, and half the music of some mighty organ.

And this reminds me of the sea, which shares with the iceberg something of the glory and the power. In the first place, from the white brightness of the ice, the eye is tuned to such a high key, or so stimulated and bedazzled, that the ocean is not only dark by contrast, but dark in reality. It is purple, so deep as to amount almost to blackness—an evening violet I would call it, a complexion magnificent and rich exceedingly in the blaze of noon, and at late and early hours when the skies are full of brilliant colors. What heightens the effect of this dye of the ocean, is the pale emerald water around the berg, and in which it floats as in a vast bath, the loveliness, clarity and divine beauty of which no language can paint in a way to kindle the proper feeling and emotion. From ten to fifty feet in breadth, it encircles the berg, a zone or girdle of sky-green, that most delicate tint of the sunset heavens, and lies, or plays with a kind of serpent play, between the greenish white ice and the violet water, as the bright deeps of air lie beyond the edge of a blue-black cloud. There is no perceptible blending, but a sharp line which follows, between the bright and the dark, the windings of the berg, across which you may, if you have the temerity, row the bow of your whale-boat, and gaze down, down the fearfully transparent abyss, until the dim ice-cliffs and the black deeps are lost in each other’s awful embrace.

I have spoken of the figure, motion, and the breaking of the iceberg, incidentally mentioning its sounds, its colors, and the surrounding waters. You are now ready to go with us, and spend the afternoon about it. Early in the morning, and for the last hour, all but its heights and peaks has been wrapped in cloud-like fog. That, you discover, is thinning off, and will presently all pass away. The breeze is fresh from the north, and we will sail down upon the north-eastern side, until we have it between us and the 3 o’clock sun. We are upon soundings, and, as we glide from the broad sunny tract into the shadow of the berg, the ocean should be green, a deep green. But we have been sailing with the white ice in our eyes, and you see the ocean a dark purple. The captain drops sail, and sets the men at their oars. As the current sets back from the berg—the reverse of the current below—you notice that they are pulling slowly, but steadily forward without any perceptible advance. We are distant a good hundred yards, as near again as we ought to be for safety. But this is the position for the painter, and it will be the care of the captain to keep it, the required time, as nearly as possible.

As the broad roller lifts us lightly and gracefully, and leaves us sinking on its after-slope, how majestic is the silent march of it, the noiseless flight of it! But look!—look!—as it flees in all its imposing breadth of darkness, see the great, green star upon its breast—a spangle green as grass, as the young spring grass in the sunshine, gleaming like some skylight of the deep, some emerald window in the dome of the sea-palace, letting up the splendor. What do you suppose that is? It is ice, a point of the berg pricking up into the illuminated surface and reflecting the light. You will understand that better, perhaps, by and by. But wait an instant. Now!—now!—Beauty strikes the billow with her magic rod, and, presto—change!—all is glittering green. A thousand feet of purple, cloud-like wave passes, in the twinkling of an eye, into the brightness of an emerald gem, and thus rolls up and smites the iceberg. And thus, like night perpetually bursting into the splendid noon, roll up the billows, and strike the minutes of the hour. How beautiful is the transfiguration! See them split upon this angle of the castle; and as they run along the walls, with the whispery, hissing sound of smoothly sliding waters, mark how high they wash, and sweep them with their snowy banners, here and there bending over, and curling into long scrolls of molten glass, which burst in dazzling foam, and plunge in many an avalanche of sparkling jewelry. Into the great porch of yonder Parthenon they rush in crowds, and thunder their applause upon the steps.

Is not all this very grand and beautiful? Have you ever seen the like before? The like of it is not to be seen upon the planet, apart from the icebergs. With cold, fixed, white death, life—warm, elastic, palpitating, glorious, powerful life—is wrestling, and will inevitably throw. Do you see “the witchery of the shadows”? Pray look aloft. Castle, temple, cliff, all built into one, are draped with shadows softer than the tint of doves, the morning’s early gray, dappled with the warm pearly blues of heaven, and edged with fire. The sun is behind the ice, and the light is pouring over. A flood of light is pouring over. All is edged with fire, streaming with lightning; all its notched and flowing edges hemmed with live, scintillating sunshine, ruby, golden, green, and blue. See you below that royal sepulchre through its crystal door? Beauty hangs her lamp in there, and the sky-blue shadow looks like the fragrant smoke of it. Now tell me, was there ever any thing more lovely? Have the poets dreamed of rarer loveliness? The surf springs up like an angel from the tomb, and, with a shout of triumph, strikes it with its silvery wings. Ha! you start. But do not be frightened. It was only the cracking of the iceberg. But was there ever such a blow?—quick—tremulous—ringing—penetrating. Why, it jarred the sea, and thrilled the heart like an electric shock. One feels as if the berg had dropped, instantly dropped an inch, and cracked to the very core. Captain Knight, shall we not fall back a little? we are surely getting too close under.

While I have been talking, the painter, who sits midship, with his thin, broad box upon his knees, making his easel of the open lid, has been dashing in the colors. The picture is finished, and so, at the word, the men pull heavily at their oars, and we come round upon the south-eastern, or the cathedral front, as I will call it, from the fact that the general appearance is architectural, and the prevailing style, the Gothic. A dome and minaret, curiously thrown in upon one wing of the berg, and some elaborately cut arches opening through the water-line into the cloister-like cavern, would suggest the Saracenic. But the pointed and the perpendicular prevail, springing up full of life and energy, vivid and flame-like in their forms.

As the berg faces, we are getting the last glances of the 4 o’clock sun, and have broad sheets of both light and shadow. You see how spirited the whole thing is. It is full of brilliant, strong effects. While the hollows and depressions harbor the soft, slaty shadows, points and prominences fairly blaze and sparkle with sunshine. The current now, you discover, sweeps us past the ice, and compels us to turn about and row up the stream. Here is the point where all is strong and picturesque, and here they hold on for the painter. Let us sit upon the little bow-deck, and look, and listen to the noises of the waves at play in the long, concealed, under-sea piazza. How they slap the hollow arches! Hisses, long-drawn sighs, booming thunder-sounds, mingle with low muttering, plunging, rattling, and popping—a bedlam of all the lunatic voices of the ocean. We appear to be at the edge of a shower, such a sprinkling and spattering of drops. All abroad, and all aloft, from every edge and gutter the iceberg spouts, and rains, and drips. Over the entire face of the ice is flowing swiftly down one noiseless river thin as glass, looking, for all the world, like the perpetual falling of a transparent veil over the richest satin. Here and there, the delicate stream cuts into the silvery enamel, and engraves, in high relief, brilliant shields of jewelry, diamonds, rubies, amethysts, emeralds and sapphires. But yonder is a rare touch of the enchanter. Pray, look at it carefully. It is a glistening blue line of ice, threading the whiteness from top to bottom, a good two hundred feet. It looks as if the berg were struck, not with lightning, but with sapphire. It is simply transparent ice, and may be compared to a fissure filled with pellucid spring-water, with depths of darkness beyond the visible, illuminated edge. Darkness below the pure light flowing in, and reflecting from the inner sides of the white ice, gives us the blue. You understand the process by which so beautiful a result is effected? Well, the glacier of which this berg is a kind of spark, is mainly compacted snows, compressed to metallic hardness in the omnipotent grasp of nature. As it slides on the long, inland valley slope, it bends and cracks. The surface-water fills the crevice, and is frozen. Thus the glacier is mended, but marked forever with the splendid scar which you see before you. You fancy it has the hardness of a gem; it is softer than the flinty masses between which it seems to have been run like a casting. On the opposite slope of the berg, you will find it the channel of a torrent, melting and wearing faster than the primitive ice.

How terribly startling is this explosion! It resounded like a field-piece. And yet you perceive only a small bank of ice floating out from below where it burst off. Small as it is, the whole berg has felt it, and is slightly rolling on its deep down centre. You perceive that it is a perfectly adjusted pair of scales, and weighs itself anew at the loss of every pound. At the loss of everyounce, the central point, around which millions of tons are balanced, darts aside a very little, and calls upon the entire bulk to make ready and balance all afresh. You see the process going on. There, the water-line is slowly rising; and you peep into the long, greenish-white hollow, polished and winding as the interior of a sea-shell. Now it pauses, and returns. So will it rise and sink alternately until it stands like a headland of everlasting marble.

Again the painter wipes his brushes, puts away his second picture, and tacks a fresh pasteboard within the cover of his box, and gives the word to pull for the south-western side. How finely nature sculptures her decorations! Would not Palmer, Powers, and others of that company, whose poetic language is in spotless stone, love to be with us? Mark the high reliefs, and the deep, fine fluting of this angle, as we pass from the Temple front to the clifted. Here you see less to please, and more to terrify. A word or so describes it: It is a precipice of sparkling, white ice, freshly broken. The edge of newly broken china is nearest like it, with the suspicion of green for forty feet or more up, the reflection of that lovely pale green water. How the currents recoil and roll in upon the huge wall in whirling eddies, requiring steady toil at the oars, to keep off a plump two hundred yards, the proper distance for sketching so large a perpendicular mass.

If we except the quality and texture of the fracture, there is little to paint in all this blaze of sunlight. The outline of the berg, though, is worth remembering. It cuts the blue vault like the edge of a bright sword, and pricks it with flashing spears. The eye darts from point to point along its lengthy, zig-zag and flowing thread, and sweeps from the sea upward and over to the sea again. How persistently the treacherous current labors to bear us in upon the cliff! Let alone the oars five minutes, and we should be among the great rain-drops slipping from the overhanging crags.

Horrible! The berg is burst. The whole upper front is coming. There it is—gone in the sea. Keep still!—Keep still!—Don’t be frightened! The captain will manage it. Here come the big swells. Hurra! Look out for the next! Here we go—splendid! Now for the third and last. How she combs as she comes. Hurra!—Hurra! Here we are—all safe—inside of them. See them go!—racing over the ocean, circles of plumed cavalry. Now for the berg. He’ll make a magnificent roll of it, if he don’t go to pieces. Should he, then put us half a mile away. See it rise!—The water-line—rising—rising—up—up. It looks like a carriage-way. Hark!—Crack—crack—crack. Quick!—quick! Look at the black water here!—all spots and spangles of green. Something is coming! There it comes! The very witchcraft of the deep—Neptune’s half-acre, bowers, thrones, giants, eagles, elephants, vases spilling, fountains pouring, torrents tumbling, glassy banks. Look at the peaks slanting off into the blue air, and the great slant precipice. Hah! Don’t you see? It is coming again—slowly coming! Crack—crack—crack. Down sinks the garden—on roll the swells—down go bowers, thrones, statuary—lost amid the tumult and thunder of the surf. Over bends the precipice—this way over—frightfully over—in roll the waves—roaring, thundering in—dashing, lashing crag and chasm. Wonderful to see! Waterfalls bursting into light above—plunging in snowy columns to the sea.

How terrible—terrible all this is! But O, how beautiful! Who, that does not witness it, knows any thing of the bursting of an iceberg? It comes with the crash of a thunderbolt. But how can one tell the horrible, shocking noise? A pine split by lightning has the point, but not the awful breadth and fulness of the sound. Air, ocean, and the berg, all fairly spring at the power of it. And then the ice-fall, with its ringing, rumbling, crashing roar, and the heavy, explosion-like voice of the final plunge, followed by the wild, frantic dashing of the waters. You see the whole upper face of the ice, yards deep, and scores of them in width, all gone. All was blasted off instantly, and dropped at once, a stupendous cataract of brilliant ruins.

Here we are, at last, where the painter will revel—between the glories of sunset and the iceberg. What shall we call all this magnificence, clustered in a square quarter of a mile? The Bernese Alps in miniature. A dark violet sea, and Alps in burnished silver, with the colors of the rainbow dissolving among them. Lofty ridges, of the shape of flames, have the tint of flame; out of the purity of lilies bloom the pink and rose; sky-blue shadows sleep in the defiles; I will not say cloth of gold drapes, but water of gold washes—water of green, of orange, scarlet, crimson, purple, wash the crags and steeps; strange metallic tints gleam in the shaggy caverns—copper, bronze, and gold. Endless grace of form and outline!—endless, endless beauty! Its shining image is in the deep, hanging there as in a molten looking-glass. Look down and see it. Now the last rays of day strike the berg. How the hues and tints change and flit, flush and fade! A very mirror for the fleeting glories of the sunset, or the fitful complexions of the northern light. Prodigal Nature! Is she ever wasting splendors at this rate? Watch them on this broad, slanting park of lily-white satin. White!—It has just a breath of pink. Pink?—It is the richest rose—rose deepening into purple—purple trembling into blue, pearly blue, skirted with salmon-tints and lilac. Where are the train-bearers of this imperial robe? There they are, the smooth, black swells, one, two, three, rolling up, and changing into green as they roll up—far up, and break in sparkling diamonds on the bosom of the lustrous alabaster.

Do you hear the music? O what power in sound! Clothed in green and silver, the royal bands of the great deep are playing at every portal of the iceberg. Hark! Half thunder, and half the harmony of grand organs.

“Waters, in the still magnificence,Their solemn cymbals beat.”

“Waters, in the still magnificence,

Their solemn cymbals beat.”

The painter’s work is over. And now for harbor—all sails spread—a downy pressure on them, and the twilight ocean. Indomitable pencil! If the man is not at it again!—A last, flying sketch in lead. Let us take one more look at the berg—a farewell look. It is a beautiful creation—superlatively beautiful. It is more—sublime and beautiful—fold upon fold—spotless ermine—caught up from the billows, and suspended by the fingers of Omnipotence.

The Merciful One! It is falling!—Cliffs and pinnacles bursting—crashing—tumbling with redoubling thunders.—Pillars and sheaves of foam leap aloft.—Wave chases wave, careering wild and high.—Columns and splintered fragments spring from the deep convulsively, toppling and plunging.—A multitude of small icebergs spot the dusky waters. One slender obelisk, slowly rocking to and fro, stands a monument among the scattered ruins.

CHAPTER XLIX.

DRIFTING IN THE STRAITS.—RETREAT TO TEMPLE BAY.—PICTURESQUE SCENERY.—VOYAGERS’ SATURDAY NIGHT.

Weare drifting to the north shore in spite of all that can be done, and positively have not been before in so great danger. Our anchor, with all the cable we have, would be swinging above the bottom, were we close to the rocks. A reckless skipper, not long ago in a similar predicament, let go his anchor with the expectation that it would catch in time to save him, but he went bows on, and lost his vessel. Our hope is that some one of the flaws of wind, now ruffling the water every little while in various directions, will catch our sails, and allow us to escape into Temple Bay, a land-locked harbor close by. My anxiety to return home makes this delay a little vexatious, and galls my thin-skinned patience. We had every reason to hope, this morning, that we should be through these perilous narrows and upon the broad gulf by midnight.

The breeze touches us at the last moment, and we are gliding through the narrow pass between high craggy banks, over a comparatively shallow bottom, visible from the deck, into what appears to be a lake surrounded by mountains not unlike those about West Point, barring their fine woods. Really Labrador can show us, at last, a little forest greenery. Without a point of grandeur, this is the most picturesque scenery we have found on the coast. The greenish waters, tinted by the verdure reflected from their surface, expand to the breadth of a mile by six or seven in length, with a depth of fifty fathoms or more. We glide past the village—a knot of fish-houses, flakes and dwellings, in the bight to the left or south, and drop anchor within pistol-shot of the spruces and a mountain brook. Here we are, till next week, like a lonely fly on this mirror of the mountains, and must make the most of our shadows and reflections, sunshine and solitude, and see what they will bring us.

I sit upon deck and look about upon the wild, noiseless scene, and say: What a lonely Saturday afternoon! The weary week is just lying down to ruminate in these solemn shades. A few scattering sounds, the finishing strokes of the axe and hammer, and the low wail of the surf beyond the coast-ridge break the rest of the cool, bracing air. The upper end of the lake, as I call the bay or fiord, is hidden behind a headland, reminding me of our Hudson Butter Hill. Nothing would be pleasanter than a small voyage of discovery by twilight. Below the stern of the schooner, which swings near the beach, are the timbers of a ship peeping above water, and full of story, no doubt, as so many old salts. We have had a most agreeable tea-time, the Captain entertaining us with incidents of his life upon these northern seas. My regret, not to say vexation, that we had to leave the strait and retreat to the safety of this lovely fold, provided by the Good Shepherd of the deep, is quite dissipated after a little sketch of the perils to which we should have been subjected among the currents, becalmed and immersed in fog, banks of which I see already peeping over the hills along the shore. Sunset and twilight and the dusk of evening have come and gone. The stars are out in multitudes, Arcturus among them high in the great arch, and the depths, above which we seem to hang suspended, are thickly sown with their trembling images.

Back to Index Next